There are currently between 350 and 450 distinct types of French cheese in eight categories, each containing many varieties, so the total is probably closer to 1,000.

In 1962 there were fewer when President Charles de Gaulle famously said, “Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage?”(“How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?”)

56 cheeses are classified, protected, and regulated under French law. The majority are classified as Appellation d’origine contrôlée(AOC), the highest level of protection.

Production is classified under 4 categories, and AOC rules dictate which category(ies) each protected cheese may be designated:

Fermier: farmhouse cheese, produced on the farm where the milk is produced.

Artisanal: producer making cheese in relatively small quantities using milk from own farm, but may also purchase milk from local farms.

Coopérative: dairy with local milk producers joining together to produce cheese.

Industriel: factory-made cheese from milk sourced locally or regionally, or possibly, all over France.

Turophile: a cheese fancier

Someone who passionately enjoys wine and cheese might be described as an oenophile turophile

Michael Cranmer is an award-winning freelance travel writer and photographer. He spends most of the winter up mountains writing about, his primary passion – skiing – but also manages to sample less strenuous outings.

Related Articles

It was Emile Zola who named the huge food market of Paris called Les Halles, “the belly of Paris”. The wonderful Parisian photographer Robert Doisneau captured its vibrant life in photos for nearly 50 years before it was closed in 1969 after more than 800 years of trading, a piece of Paris history gone forever… […]

Christmas in France is all about food – the best of everything, beautifully cooked, prepared and presented. It is a time to relax and linger over a delicious meal with friends and family, a time of indulgence and the finest of food and wine. In France it is Christmas Eve when the big get together […]

France is well-known for producing some of the most famous and delicious foods in the world. From delicious crusty baguettes to indulgent desserts, this is a nation that loves high quality cuisine. But even if you love eating French food, there are a number of things that you probably don’t know about it. Here are […]

Provence shares many Christmas traditions with the rest of France, like sapins de Noël (Christmas trees) and Pére Noël (Father Christmas.) But it also has some unique ones of its own. Thirteen Desserts? Oh My! Perhaps the most famous Provence Christmas tradition is the treize (thirteen) desserts. Wait, thirteen? Yes! These are eaten after midnight […]

“This is a little corner of Paradise” says the old lady throwing her arms wide and indicating at the window of her farmhouse in the mountains of Haute Savoie, not far from Annecy. We are sitting in her kitchen on a July afternoon and it is unseasonably cloudy – a rarity for this month she […]

Blog

This might be just the thing for those of us who want to fake French with zero effort, well except for watching a 60 second video. Oliver Gee, an Australian journalist in Paris who runs a podcast called The Earful Tower shares his top tips for how to fake French and fool everyone (maybe)… Here’s […]

If you like bread, then when you’re in France you probably stop by the boulangerie every day to buy a baguette, croissant, or one of the other tempting treats that you will find inside. But if you were a bourgeois, or wealthy, family in the nineteenth or early twentieth century and lived in a town, […]

When I first set eyes on the run down, neglected and frankly horrible house I now call home, I never ever imagined that so many years later, I would still be working on it! It was a chilly day in February, sleet fell making everything look rather drab and bedraggled, a bit like how I […]

Jane Vernon from Staffordshire UK, moved to France in 2005. Her first home was near Marmande, a tranquil town in the Lot-et-Garonne, southwest France. However, she recently moved to the town of Duras in the same area, with her four children. As an agent of Leggett Immobillier, the award-winning agency in France, her property portfolio […]

Some 20 years ago, after their mother died, brothers Roger and Doug Goodman from England, gained possession of 72 letters written in 1916 from the trenches of WW1 by their uncle Alec Reader to his mother – their grandmother. He was killed, aged 17, during the Battle for High Wood on The Somme. He had […]

An insider’s view on life in the French Alps. You might say, that having lived in the French Alps for the last 15 years that Helen Watts, director and teacher at the Alpine French School in Morzine, Haut-Savoie, is living the dream, but has it all been plain sailing and what’s expat life really […]

Having visited many of the most loved and stunning French attractions over the years, my husband and I are always on the lookout for undiscovered, out of the way places, depending on our route. By renting a car, navigating small roads and having a flexible itinerary, we allow for an easier access to unknown places. […]

The Alsace Wine Route The region of Alsace, in the northeast of France, has a reputation to uphold. It’s funny how you never tend to spend much time traveling in your own region, so as a resident of Alsace, I decided to spend a day exploring the Alsace Wine Route. Among the French community, this […]